7 REASONS TO CREATE YOUR OWN INTRANET FOR YOUR BUSINESS

In the simplest of terms, an intranet can be viewed as a centralized “virtual office”  in which you and your colleagues can meet, exchange ideas/documents and collaborate on projects with one another. It’s something that could never have existed decades ago, although modern technology has made it easier than ever to incorporate an intranet into your business. With a quality intranet on your side, you can streamline your business processes to a dramatic extent.Read the follow 7 reasons why you should create your own intranet for your business.

Simplicity
You choose the features you need, and no others. To appeal to a large swath of potential customers, commercial software adds many features you may not want, and these extraneous features introduce unnecessary complexity.

Consistency
By developing your own, custom design, you can ensure consistency across your entire intranet (and beyond).  You can also ensure alignment with your organization’s brand, culture, and values.

Evolution, at your pace
You can add new features and capabilities whenever you desire, and not at the pace of your software provider.  No longer must you wait for the next software release, or hasten to upgrade before you are ready just to maintain support.

Integration
You can more easily integrate with your other business-critical systems – particularly if you built them in-house, too.

Responsiveness
You can respond to requests from your people with action, not promises or excuses. By having your support staff in-house, they’re available to you whenever you need them.

Talent infusion
Invest in talented people (who design and develop software), and not the software itself.  By sticking with Web standards when building your own intranet, the available talent pool is vast, and additional resources are easily found.  On the other hand, a commercial software platform may require specialized skills that are scarce and, as a result, expensive.
Talented people prefer to create, and not simply work within the constraints of some proprietary platform – because you’ll want to customize your commercial software at some point. Talented people enjoy this freedom, take greater pride in their work, and, as a result, produce better results.
Your in-house designers and developers may go full bore on the initial development of your intranet, but their involvement thereafter, as part of your constant improvement process, will be sporadic — freeing them up to benefit your organization in other ways, too.

Cost
This advantage may be the most difficult to believe, but it’s also the most important. Commercial software is typically sold with an initial license and an ongoing annual maintenance fee, or on a per-person, per-month fee. From my experience, the in-house alternative is not only less expensive – it’s WAY less expensive, a 10- or 20-fold advantage, or more.